The History of Italian Progressive Rock

The History of Italian Progressive Rock
The early 70s was an era of innovative music in Italy, like never before – or after.
But to understand this phenomena, you have to know how it happened.

By the late 60s, beat music was extremely popular, both in England, and other countries. But in Italy, there was nothing of this. No beat, or rock and roll music was made. They played covers of popular songs, and sometimes beat groups were imported from other countries. These were groups who weren’t big in their own countries, but hoped to strike in Italy. Most of the musicians in the Italian beat groups were mediocre musicians, and they were often badly prepared.
Despite this, many bands were still around in the early 70s, and they had begun to develop their own style, influenced by Van Der Graaf Generator(VDGG), Genesis, Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, King Crimson, and other bands.
The bands often used classical arrangements, and developed their ideas with great care and perfectionism. They kept their focus on the emotional and the intellectual, and there where influences from jazz, rock, and classical music (barock as well as pure classical) mixed in with the many rhythm changes. A few bands were even more experimental, such as Franco Battiato and Opus Avantra.

VDGG was by far the most popular band in Italy. They played to an excited audience of some 40.000 people in Rome. In 1972, the Italian progressive rock literally exploded. This was after VDGG’s ”Pawn Hearts”, which was number one on the Italian sales charts for 12 weeks. It is hard to understand that a band like VDGG came to be so accepted by so many Italians, but it proves that progressive rock was very big during this period.

The Italian progressive rock was, however, really born in 1969 when New Trolls released their first album. It had logical lyrics, and it followed a thread. The actual music was not quite developed yet, but this was absolutely a concept record, and it was to be followed by hundreds.

Five periods
The Italian Progressive Rock is often divided into five major periods.
The first is between 1968 and 1970. The groups played a type of beat music, but were trying to develop their own sound. The first bands were New Trolls, Le Orme, and Quelli (early PFM)

The year 1970 is the second period. It includes the groups that were created in the spirit of progressive rock. They usually didn’t have very much musical experience. Groups like The Trip, Il Balletto di Bronzo, Gleemen, and Formula Tre beolong here. But these band were still quite inspired by American psycedelic rock. Many of them had rather a rough sound, with Hendrix-sounding guitars.

The third period is between 1971 and 1973. This is definitely the progressive movement’s greatest and most thriving period, with big open-air festivals. During this period, hundreds of records were released. It was almost as if all Italian artists suddenly wanted to release their own progressive album – or at least progressive-influenced album.
In those days, there was no unemployment benefit, or anything like that, so you had to succeed immediately, if you wanted a chance to record a second album.
Even though many groups never got the chance to do an album, they still managed to release one or two singles.
The album covers often had costly gatefold covers, and were quite artistic in layout. Seeing as so few bands released records, and they were often quite limited editions, and the fact that old LP’s often are in bad shape, prices on well kept records are high. Many people collect these records too, which helps keep the prices up.

PFM’s great American tour, and Le Ormes English tour were the climax of this period.
The biggest groups of this period were those two groups. Other big groups were Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso, Jumbo, Metamorfosi, La Nuova Idea, Garybaldi, Osanna, Area, Delirium, and RDM, and of course many others.
Some singers who were extra special were Demetria Stratos from Area, who used hos voice like an instrument, and David Spitaleri of Metamorfosi. Guitar players Bambi Fossati from Garybaldi, Alberto Radius from Formula Tre and Il Volo, and Nico Di Palo from New Trolls are also quite special.
PFM, Le Orme, Maxophone, RDM, and Banco released albums with English lyrics in an attempt to find new listeners. Most people, myself included, consider this to be a mistake. PFM released three albums, and ”Live in USA” aka ”Cook” and Chocolate King are, however, fairly good.
Some really good classic albums recorded in the early 70s, remained unreleased for 20 years. Two of these are Buon Vecchio Charlies, which was released on CD by Melos in 1990 and on LP by Akarma 1999, and Eneide, who released their album ”Uomini umili popoli liberi” on their own label as a limited edition 1990. Both of these Lp’s are becoming quite difficult to get a hold of.

The fourth period includes all those groups who could have brought new ideas into the Italian progressive rock, but instead were a part of the downfall in 1974-1976.
There were, however, a few groups that were still developing the music and taking it to new levels. I speak of groups such as Il Volo, Ibis, Apoteosi, Corte Dei Miracoli, Latte E Miele, and Biglietto Per L´Inferno.

The fifth, and last, period of Italian progressive rock are the groups that didn’t get their chance to realease an album until 1977. There were a few really great groups such as Celeste, La Corte Dei Miracoli, and Locanda Delle Fate among them.
Up until 1982 there were occasional records released that could be called progressive, or progressive-influenced. Some bands to mention are MO.DO, Hopo, La Sensazione, and Abissi Infiniti, but there are of course others.

These five periods were followed by ten years of almost comlete silence. During this period, no one seemed interested in Italian progressive rock. A few groups/artists released albums, but they were in a light, neoprog style.
I know, from safe sources, that you could, during these years, buy Museo Rosenbach’s LP in prime condition for 10 USD. Today, you pay that times one hundred.
Imagine having known about this Italian Progressive Rock in the 80s! I could have bought all those records that today are rare collector’s items.
In the early 90s, some new groups started to pop up. The first to spur had a lot of the 80’s in them, with definite neoprog sound, and they were often with English lyrics, but it was a new promising beginning.
The first groups of this new era were groups such as Sithonia, Aton’s, Calliope, Ezra Winston, Malibran, Il Castello Di Atlante, Deus Ex Machina, Malibran, Moongarden, and perhaps the best of them all; Nuova Era with Walter Pini as front man.
From 1995 and to our day, new talented groups have flooded the market. Many groups have their minds set on recreating the spirit of the 70s.
Some of my favourite albums are Nuova Era ”Il Passo di Soldato”(1995), Divae ”Determinazione”(1995), La Maschera Di Cera ”Lux Ade”(2006), Mad Crayon ”Diamanti”(1999), Ubi Major ”Nostos”(2005), and La Tore Dell´Alchemista ”Neo”(2007). But unfortunately this albums doesn´t excists on LP(yet).

As these new groups started to pop up, the old bands became known outside of Italy, mainly in Japan and South Korea. The old albums were re-released on CD, one by one, and many were even re-released on vinyl. This was such a lucrative business, that companies started to look for old recordings of groups who had never been released. Old demos and live recordings were released, some good, but some had, unfortunately, a bad sound quality. But you can imagine what it would have sounded like if it had been recorded properly.
One of the first record companies to release the Italian progressive rock was Mellow Records led by the ever enthusiastic Valter Maroni. Thanks to him, completely unknown bands, old and new, have been released. Another record company is Vinyl Magic/BTF, which is the largest producer of re-releases today.
Fronti Cetra have re-released most of ther music on vinyl, and RCA Italia along with Contempo re-released their.
Si-Wan Records from Korea and Seven Seas from Japan were the greatest eastern ones, their re-releases were high quality exact copies of the originals.
The result of the re-discovery of the old Italian progressive rock meant that some groups that were compeletely unknown in their days are considered cult today.
                   

Sources:

Books and magazines
Rock Progressivo Italiano ”The Complete Discography” by Paolo Barotto & Marco D´Ubaldo
The Return of Italian Pop by Paolo Barotto
Audion - The New Music Magazine by Steven & Alan Freeman.
Progressive Italiano by Alessandro Gaboli & Giovanni Ottone
Pop Italiano D´ispirazione Christiano by Fabio Marchignoli (for sale on Ebay)

Internet
Italianprog.com, fantastic website dedicated to the Italian prog scene from the 70s
Progarchives.com, the bigest prog source on the www
Gepr.com, New Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock
“The Italian Scene” Leorme.alama.it/ita/testo.htm
“Italian Progressive Music” progressive.homestead.com/ITALIAPROG
“Italian Progressive Rock” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Planetmellotron" planetmellotron.com
& thoose wonderful Blogspots, and other sources out there

Friends and sources of inspiration
Mikael Brodowicz at “Repeat Records” in Lund, Sweden
Augusto Croce at "italianprog.com"
Fabio at "Cosmorecord".
& all music friends out there